Paneer Cutlets | Indian Spiced Cottage Cheese Fritters

November 8, 2016

Crispy, crunchy and delicious – these paneer cutlets are examples of all goodness combined in cute little packs! With these beauties, our blog touches another milestone!

Today a big day! In many parts of the world this 11/9 is a big day in 2016 and for us @FlavorQuotient, it is really, really special! You will know why shortly! We had started this blog with very little knowledge on how to keep a blog up and running, let alone making any income. Income part is still stuck at about couple of burgers a month, but at least we proved to ourselves that we can make it work along with our primary jobs!

And now, after about 1 year and 8 months of serious blogging, we have taken the next step, a very essential one! With this recipe, you will be witnessing the very first video recipe from Flavor Quotient! Now isn’t that exciting! May be you have already seen half a million recipe videos – slow, fast, classic, tasty-style & more, but for us first-time creators, excitement is almost surreal!

My today’s recipe is a quick and easy fix for starter with the basic yet very popular ingredient which is nothing but all Indian’s favorite – paneer i.e. cottage cheese. Sounds way too simple? Yes, let’s be honest. We chose a simpler recipe just to make sure we get all the pieces right in our first attempt of video making. And this paneer cutlets is something which I can make at any given day without following any written instructions as these cutlets are quite regular in our weekly meals. They are easy to make, nutritious and add an extra zest to our best comfort food of dal-chawal!

This recipe of paneer cutlets is quite customizable too. I added veggies of my choice which were carrots and bell peppers. You can add any veggies of your choice, like finely chopped cauliflower, green beans, green peas or even something which you want to hide in for your kiddo that he/she is not fond of. Only never omit the boiled potatoes as they act as a binder.

This plan of making recipe videos had crawled into my mind since a long time which I had already mentioned here before; but something was holding me back. When my dearest hub, who happens to be my blogging partner as well, announced that we will be making videos soon, I jumped my gun! We didn’t take any time to zero in the recipe to shoot as paneer was handy at home and paneer cutlets happened to come to my mind by default. It seemed much less complicated as compared to our chicken favorites.

From idea to execution – things happened in zoom within a day. Then editing took some time, about couple of days, as we both were complete beginners in this. With whatever we could learn in such short span of time, we are sharing with you today. We welcome your honest feedback on this as we truly believe that together we learn best!

Wrap the paneer in a kitchen towel and put it under some heavy object like mortar and pestle. This will drain out all the water from the paneer and your cutlet mixture won’t be too watery. This is an important step, so do not skip it.

In a frying pan heat 2 teaspoons of vegetable oil and add the carrots and bell pepper. Season it with little salt and garam masala. Stir them well and saute for 5 minutes.

Then add the chopped tomatoes and saute until all the water is absorbed as any excess water will turn your cutlet mixture soggy.

Once the veggies are cooked and dried take them off the heat and let it cool.

Now take the drained paneer and grate it in a large bowl. Add the grated boiled potato & cooked veggies to it and season with salt to taste. Mix them well using a spatula to make a homogeneous mixture. Freeze these mixture for 30 minutes before shaping the cutlets.

After 30 minutes of freezing, if you feel your paneer mixture is still a bit soggy, add the breadcrumbs and mix well. Now it would make clean cutlets. [Tip: you can even freeze it after making the cutlets.]

Take about 1 tablespoon of paneer mixture and shape it in a ball. Then press it to give a shape of a cutlet. You will get about 15 to 17 cutlets from this mixture.

Heat the remaining oil in a non-stick frying pan. Add the shaped cutlets to the hot oil and shallow fry them for 1 to 2 minutes each side on medium flame until each side turns golden brown.